We present a published guest poet each month. This month we’re delighted to welcome PRATIBHA CASTLE.

Pratibha Castle’s award-winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds and A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press) publishes 2022. Her work appears in Agenda, HU, Blue Nib, OHC, Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Old Water Rat Publishing and Raceme and London Grip, amongst others. Highly commended, long-listed and given special mention in competitions including The Bridport Poetry Prize 2021, Welsh Poetry Competition, Gloucestershire Poetry Society Competition, Brian Dempsey Memorial Competition, Sentinel Literary Journal Competition, Storytown Poetry Competition. She is anthologised, and a regular reader for West Wilts Radio Poetry Place. She can be heard speaking about her life and inspiration and reading a selection of her work on Home Stage Meet the Poet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2_sEo0gMOY

Born in Dublin, Pratibha Castle now lives in West Sussex. Although she had a brief love affair with poetry – both the reading and the writing of it – on an English and Creative Writing Degree course at Chichester University in 2009, her focus at that time and later on a Creative Writing MA at Chichester University, was prose. In 2019, inspired by Mary Oliver’s passing, poetry took her over. It has yet to let her out of its grip, a situation she is well content with. Pratibha is currently looking for a publisher for a second pamphlet.